Champion Jockey

Champion Jockey: G1 Jockey & Gallop Racer portrays the world of horse racing that is compatible with the Kinect. It's the next in line of a well known series of G1 Jockey games (Well, known to some...)

Champion Jockey consists of 3 modes to play: Story Mode, Race Mode, and Fun Race Mode.

The Story Mode starts you as a rookie jockey, and teaches you through various tutorials how to ride your horse properly, as you pass each lesson everything starts to become clear with the controls on how to control your animal [you're talking about the horse right? -ed]. Once the tutorials are out of the way, you’re then ready to start racing in the big leagues. When you ride, you’ll earn Racing Points which will level your character up, as you level up, you’ll be able to ride better horses, giving you a better chance to progress successfully throughout the game. Story Mode is very in-depth and realistic, you even learn about conserving your horses energy for the final stages of a race.

There are 3 riding styles to choose from; ‘Standard’, ‘Pro’ and ‘Custom’, offering you varied levels of control over your horse.

Standard Mode is where the more complex controls are performed automatically, the controlling of your horse is a lot easier, but is restricted. Pro Mode is where everything is controlled by the player, controlling your horse is less restricted but it's more difficult. And Custom Mode is, yep, you guessed it, the mode where you can fully customise the controls to your liking.

An annoying thing with the story mode is that it features a LOT of written dialogue. You’ll find yourself having to press a button about 20 times just to get to the next race, which gets frustrating. Theres also lots of stats about various things that, to be honest, unless you are really into your horse racing, you just wont care about and you’ll just skip on.

Fun Race Mode lets you free race or free battle with another player on any of the race courses, and you can also use your Kinect or Playstation Move here to either race or battle too. If you are having mates over to play, then this’ll be the mode for you.

Race Mode has challenge modes for you to play, you can use your horse in either Scenario, Quest, or practice modes, it also sports an Online mode for you and 3 friends to play.

The graphics of Champion Jockey are admittedly not the best the Xbox has ever seen, but it does manage to get away with it (do you really need top notch graphics for a horse racing game anyway??)

On the whole, this game will be fun if you have a group of mates over for a games night using your Kinect, and theres a lot here for horse racing enthusiasts too.